Replacing Trident will cost thousands of jobs, says report

Replacing Trident will cost thousands of jobs, says report

If the government replaces the Trident nuclear weapons system, it will be at the expense of thousands of manufacturing jobs, says a peace NGO.

Also at stake will be thousands of jobs in the armed forces, as well as other jobs and services across all areas of public spending.

These conclusions come from a new report produced by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), which shows that replacing Trident will cause more job losses than scrapping it altogether.

CND is taking its research findings to all three large party conferences, sending a copy to every MP, and holding parliamentary meetings.

"We must raise this important issue to ensure the old misunderstandings about scrapping Trident and job losses are laid to rest," said a spokesperson.

"Since the tens of billions needed for Trident replacement are now supposed to come from the defence budget, which is already massively overcommitted, other projects will have to be axed to make way for it, along with thousands of jobs."

Work on the new weapons would not create much UK employment, and hundreds of millions would be spent in the US, not Britain, the campaign declares.

"But if we just cancelled Trident most jobs would not be lost until 2016 or later, and with adequate planning many could be re-assigned to other projects, in expanding and socially useful areas such as building surface ships or non-proliferation work, or in the developing field of marine energy."

The report says that "by diverting resources from nuclear weapons - a dead end industry in more ways than one - we could create far more employment and economic growth."